Update on Olivero: The Making of Drupal 9's New Look

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Matt and Mike talk with Putra Bonaccorsi and host Mike Herchel about Drupal 9's new front-end theme, and its past, present, and future. 

Episode Guests

Mike Herchel

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Mike is a former senior front-end developer at Lullabot, a lead of the Drupal 9 core "Olivero" theme initiative, and an organizer for Florida DrupalCamp.

More about Mike

Putra Bonaccorsi

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Putra Bonaccorsi is a Senior Front-end Developer with a flair for creative uses of CMS and a dedication to finding unique solutions to tough problems.

More about Putra

Mentioned in this Episode

Transcript

Transcript

Matt Kleve:
For May 14th, 2020, it's the Lullabot Podcast.
Matt Kleve:
Hey everybody, it's the Lullabot Podcast. Episode 249. I'm Matt Kleve, a senior developer at Lullabot. With me as always, cohost of the show, senior front end dev, Mike Herchel. Hey, Mike.
Mike Herchel:
Hello, Matt. How are you doing?
Matt Kleve:
I'm doing pretty dang great, and I've got a rule today for today's podcast. You ready for my rule?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. What's my rule?
Matt Kleve:
You're not allowed to talk about two things today. Do you know what those two things? You can't say the word COVID, and you can't say the word Drupal. We've done way too many [crosstalk 00:00:45].
Mike Herchel:
Drupal, Drupal gone?
Mike Herchel:
Oh, Con.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
Gotcha.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah. Because we've done too many of those recently. We're talking, we're back to the Drupal Project today, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yes. Drupal 9.
Matt Kleve:
That's where we're going. So Lullabot is a strategy / design / development company. We build websites for large companies primarily working with Drupal.
Mike Herchel:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
And when people install Drupal, they are blown away by the Drupal theme, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, so when you first install Drupal, it comes with a theme called Bartik that was designed back in 2009-ish. By Jen Simmons.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, I was going to say that's the Jen Simmons one, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
She a lot of the effort behind that. I remember there was a region called triptych. It was triptych one, triptych two, triptych three, or something?
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
Right? And it's blue, and it looked good for its time. Right? Is it responsive? I don't remember.
Mike Herchel:
The Drupal 8 version has been retrofitted to be responsive, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Okay. But that was something that their web development has changed since then. People's design tests have changed.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. And designs have changed. Like the tastes have changed and the features have changed, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
So we're talking a little bit about the Olivero theme, and that's something that is near and dear to a good number of Lullabot hearts. Including yours, Mike.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. With us today is we have two guests. The first guest is Putra Bonaccorsi, who is now a technical project manager, but was a former senior front end developer at Lullabot. She's from outside of Philadelphia, but actually in New Jersey.
Matt Kleve:
Welcome, Putra.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. I would still consider myself to be somewhat in Philadelphia as well too, even though I am kind of across the bridge in South Jersey.
Mike Herchel:
Do you follow the Phillies, the Eagles?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Oh yeah, of course.
Matt Kleve:
You're in the Jersey Shore.
Mike Herchel:
Right.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Matt Kleve:
So Mike Herchel, you're our second guest of the day.
Mike Herchel:
Yes I am the second guest.
Matt Kleve:
Mike, regular co-host of the Lullabot Podcast. You've been doing that for a few years. Senior front end developer at Lullabot.
Mike Herchel:
Uh-huh.
Matt Kleve:
Decided you had way too much free time, and decided you wanted to jump in with both feet and get something done here with the Olivero theme with Drupal Corps.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, I feel like we're kind of solving a problem here.
Matt Kleve:
So we've called it Olivero, and we've said it's a theme for Drupal Corps, like maybe somebody could just kind of give the 30,000 foot view. What are we doing? Why are we doing it?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
The theme Olivero is named after Rachel Olivero, who was a big advocate for accessibility in [inaudible 00:03:19] with the Drupal community.
Matt Kleve:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And the theme is basically a new take of the Bartik theme. We want to make sure that the theme is updated in a modern design, and also addresses a lot of the accessibility concerns as well, too.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
What I was going to say is it's kind of just like a brand new design for the front end of Drupal. So the Bartik, back when it was released, it was kind of a modern design for back then, but that was ten years ago. Ten years is a very long time in internet years. I would say it's almost like a century in internet years, right? And we need something that looks better. That when you install Drupal for the first time, you feel that Drupal is a modern content management system, because it is. But if you install something and the style is from ten years ago, it's going to feel a little dated. So this is attempting to remedy that.
Matt Kleve:
You just answered the question I hadn't yet asked, Mike. You're saying first impressions are important, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Is that what I'm hearing? And when somebody installs Drupal, it's not that we're expecting them to make Olivero their theme, which many people do, and that's fine.
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
But if they are new to Drupal, they're seeing Olivero because that's the theme, and it needs to be a good experience for them.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, exactly. It's about getting those warm fuzzies.
Matt Kleve:
Because I'm not sure the last time I've seen Bartik. I'm not sure the last time I've opened Bartik code.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, ever since when I was building websites by myself, one thing I used to always say at meet-ups and stuff is if you're not writing your own theme, it's like wearing somebody else's underwear. It's just never going to feel right. I was always an advocate of at least sub-themeing Zen, or one of these other sub themes... [crosstalk 00:05:19]
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right.
Matt Kleve:
... and making your own theme. So it's not that you're expecting people to use Olivero as their base theme, or as the future of Drupal, but it's something that's important to Drupal nonetheless. Is that what I'm hearing?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. Well, I would also go as far as maybe people would be using Bartik if Bartik didn't look so dated.
Matt Kleve:
That's interesting. Okay.
Mike Herchel:
So hopefully people will use Olivero since in my humble opinion, and biased opinion, it looks frickin' amazing.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, and I'm biased as well too. And I'll use the case for the box theme is for someone who's not interested in creating their own sub theme, for instance, they can essentially utilize the Olivero theme to create their block content, right? So instead of investing time and just diving into the code to modify to your liking, Olivero out of the box should feel really modern and should also highlight the type of content that you're trying to showcase as well too when your projects are your block site.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
One of the goals of this new redesign is that we want it to feel modern, but at the same time we also want it to age well for the next five to ten years as well, too. So that's a big chunk.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, good luck. Mike just said that was a century. So, yeah, ten years from now.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
I'm sure there'll be flying cars, right?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
For sure, yes.
Mike Herchel:
Landing rockets.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
I don't think we're going to have websites in the next ten years. Who knows?
Matt Kleve:
So we're expecting Olivero; we're hoping Olivero is going to hit Drupal Corp. When Drupal releases 9.1, is that correct?
Mike Herchel:
That is right. And if I recall correctly, that's like somewhere around November. We didn't quite have the time to hit the [inaudible 00:07:02] release, which is going to be in June. So that's actually coming up pretty quickly.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah. Where did this all start? Who's bright idea was this, Mike?
Mike Herchel:
That's a good idea. How did we get tricked into this?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right.
Mike Herchel:
Which Putra actually wrote an article about this.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Herchel:
So I'm going to let you...
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
... tell the story here, and I'll jump in.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
I can halfway tell the story, because I can still remember today, to be honest with you. So on the last day of the DrupalCon Seattle, I was in the lobby of the hotel just waiting for my friend, and then came in Mike Herchel. And we were just casually talking about the status of Drupal 9, and... [crosstalk 00:07:45]
Matt Kleve:
Hang on, let me reset here.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
You and Herchel are sitting in the lobby... [crosstalk 00:07:48]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
... at DrupalCon Seattle.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
Dang it, I said the word. [crosstalk 00:07:51] [inaudible 00:07:51] with Mike Herchel... [crosstalk 00:07:51]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
You remember that's the first rule of the podcast, right?
Matt Kleve:
I know.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
[crosstalk 00:07:55] Not to say anything about DrupalCon, sorry about that.
Mike Herchel:
You've got to take a shot.
Matt Kleve:
So you and Herchel in the lobby at the hotel.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
So we had actually just talked, Mike, about how important these serendipitous conversations are.
Mike Herchel:
Yes.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Indeed.
Matt Kleve:
At such events, yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
So...[crosstalk 00:08:12]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
... I'm setting the stage. All right, yeah. Okay, I'm there. So is it morning?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah. It was that night.
Matt Kleve:
Oh, okay. So Mike's awake?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mike's definitely awake. And we were casually talking about keynote, and also the status of Drupal 9, and we also have Larry there as well, too, who is the Drupal Corp. Committer and also the front end framework manager. And also Angie Byron as well, too, who is also another Drupal Corp committer and also product manager as well, too. And the four of us sort of had a conversation about what distinguishes a good seamless theme. And the discussion kind of led into the current status of hey, do we have a theme that's currently in progress for the D-9 release.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And to our surprise, there was no initiative in place, which was kind of shocking to my MS [office 00:09:14] too. And knowing Mike, he was like hey, why don't we just us two get together and start this initiative? And I was like sure, I'm down for that. Not knowing that oh my god, starting a Drupal Corp initiative would be a lot of work, but at the same time it's definitely such a serendipitous moment to be able to be in that place and just be like, hey, let's do this. Let's start a Drupal Corp initiative and have other folks be involved in that process as well, too.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
So that was the gist of I guess the origin story. We just kind of talked about like if we were to redesign Bartik, what would Bartik look like? And discuss about the design intentions about making it look modern, but at the same time other kind of cool functionality, like adding a secondary drop-down menu as well, too, or other types of features that are not available in Bartik at the moment as well.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, I'm looking at some of my Slack chat on the Drupal Slack right here. So on May 13th of last year, so that's almost about a year ago. I actually pinged Larry, and I said hey, is there anyone that's working on a new core theme? Because I wanted to kind of double check. He's like, "Nope. Not that I'm aware of." And from there, you and I were already kind of spinning it around in our heads...[crosstalk 00:10:55]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right.
Mike Herchel:
... at that point.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly. And that point forward, Mike came to us and was just like, "hey, let's form a band."
Matt Kleve:
Mike has done that before, so I'm not surprised to hear that is the story. So that's awesome.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
That's not the actual quote, but you can totally imagine it, right? Coming from Mike.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Because Mike and I, our expertise are in the front end development realm, but we definitely don't have any expertise when it comes to design or also figuring out information of a texture [standpoint 00:11:31].
Matt Kleve:
So how do you jump in then? How do you make something look modern, or be able to stand the test of time for the next ten years? What's the plan? How do you figure that out from there?
Mike Herchel:
That's a good question.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
You bring in awesome designers, right?
Matt Kleve:
Yeah. So Mike added some more people to the band, it sounds like.
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly. Exactly.
Mike Herchel:
If I recall correctly, I kind of tricked Jen into it.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
You did.
Mike Herchel:
I was like hey, you know what you're doing.
Matt Kleve:
You're talking about Jen [Watowski 00:12:00] from Lullabot?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, Jen Watwoski.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Mike Herchel:
Who's a senior designer here at Lullabot. And I was kind of just like yeah, I'm doing some designs. It'll be pretty cool, it'll be prominent. Not too much work. And I know full on I'm just tricking her.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
He did the same thing with Jared Ponchot, as well, too.
Mike Herchel:
No, I think Jen brought in Jared.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Okay.
Matt Kleve:
Sure.
Mike Herchel:
Because... [crosstalk 00:12:25]
Matt Kleve:
Jared Ponchot, creative director at Lullabot.
Mike Herchel:
Yep, yep. And he was interested in getting into it, which was exciting, because those two together, they're very good at bouncing ideas off of each other.
Matt Kleve:
It's that synergistic feeling within our design team, right?
Mike Herchel:
It is synergistic.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, synergistic.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. A little bit of omnichannel.
Matt Kleve:
Blue marine, right? Yeah, blue marine. Synergistic.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. So we got Jen and Jared in, and I guess the next step is like they've got to figure out what to design, and what to do. And so we started making documentation if I recall correctly, right, Putra?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yes, that's correct.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
So, as part of putting the band together for the initial team of the Olivero project, we also invested time for creating the Drupal Corp ideas queue ticket, which is really important because it helped us stay focused on the motivation and problem that we're trying to solve, and also propose a resolution for the Drupal community to see as well, too. So that they could see our thought process as far as our goals for introducing this new more modern clean design for the Drupal 9 theme.
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So the idea with issue queue is basically a project on Drupal.org. And there's no code, it's just basically an issue queue queue that people can submit something, and they can say if I want something to go into Corp, I'm going to put in this issue, and then people will discuss it. And then blah, blah, blah, blah.
Matt Kleve:
Mike, we've talked about the ideas queue on the podcast before.
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
Essentially, it's like here's an idea for Corp, and people talk about it, and talk about what needs to happen to make that happen, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it.
Matt Kleve:
Other people chip in and say here's a different idea, or here's a better way to do it, or no that's terrible?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, so we just threw an initiative and said hey, we want to create a new theme that's modern, and it's going to have some of these features. And we didn't have any designs yet, and we let people know that we made that, and a couple people hopped in there and said yeah, this is a great idea. No one was against it, which I would have been very surprised if someone was.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
And so at that point, we were kind of off to the races.
Matt Kleve:
So at that point did you then start making a theme? How do you go from there?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, that's a good question. So at that point, I guess starting the design phase. We had to come up with the stakeholders... [crosstalk 00:15:12]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Herchel:
... and so in the future, we're going to do specifically... [crosstalk 00:15:20]
Matt Kleve:
Well, let's talk about that. About the design.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
And what went into it. We should bring Jen, Jared... [crosstalk 00:15:26]
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. I want to do a full podcast on it, but we can give maybe a quick overview of it right now. We have a ton of stuff to talk about.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Mike Herchel:
So Jen and Jared came in, but of course they didn't know... [crosstalk 00:15:39]
Matt Kleve:
They waved their design wand, right? They waved their design wand and said, "this is how it should look."
Mike Herchel:
No, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Almost, right?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
It's just magic.
Matt Kleve:
It sounds like in short, you figured out who would be using the website, and what they would need to do. Like personas?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, sure. So before we actually jump into some stuff in [inaudible 00:15:59], which is a tool that we're using to design the different comps of the Olivero theme, we did some explorations with the stakeholders. So one of the exercises that we did was voice and tone of the theme.
Matt Kleve:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Which is where we essentially just created [inaudible 00:16:16] Comp that gives different keywords for how we would like the theme to be. So we have a scenario where we had the two words of formal slash casual.
Matt Kleve:
Right.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
So the stakeholders were able to pinpoint on the spectrum.
Matt Kleve:
Sure.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Whether or not... [crosstalk 00:16:37]
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, it's like a sliding scale.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Mike Herchel:
And they could put their dot wherever on that line, say I want it 25 percent over or something.
Matt Kleve:
Like on Instagram, is my kitten picture like little heart or big heart?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly. Or do you want the theme to be light and bright, or do you want it to be dark but impactful as well, too?
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
So that exercise gives us a good... [crosstalk 00:16:59]
Matt Kleve:
A target.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
... a target.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And also a good terminology to go by as well, too. And I'm sure like Jared and also Jen can speak more eloquently about it, but that's essentially the first step of us establishing our design principles.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
For the theme as well, which are to make sure it's accessible. Making sure that the layout, colors, and functionality follows the accessible theme and the Drupal accessibility guideline. And also should be simple, modern, but also have a really awesome focus in terms of high contrast, unsaturated color, and a lot of negative space as well too, just so that there's a lot of room for people to breathe as well too, as they're navigating the different pages.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah. And a part of our design process, we also spend a lot of time identifying stakeholders; folks that would be involved in the design review process as well too. So the stakeholders that we were able to identify are pretty much like the main folks that are in the Drupal community, so Dries, the creator and project lead of Drupal, Angie Byron, Larry, and [inaudible 00:18:17] as well too, who are the project managers.
Mike Herchel:
And then Christina, too. Christina was in there.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And Christina as well, too, sorry.
Mike Herchel:
That's Christina Chumillas, who is the UX maintainer, and also a fellow Lullabot.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly. Doing the project, we do a weekly meeting with the stakeholders, showing them different explorations that Jen and also Jared put together, and just get a sense from the team of, hey, are these visual presentations pretty much in line of what you're thinking for the new D-9? And that was a really great process where we were able to get some feedback from stakeholders, and establish the voice and tone of the theme itself as well too, through the Zoom mock-up meeting that we introduced during the design process as well.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, so we had this thing called Zoom [Mocks 00:19:13], which there's an article on, and it has nothing to do with Zoom to video chat.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right.
Mike Herchel:
It's just basically a zoomed in picture on the website to establish almost the look and feel of the website without doing the whole thing. And so Jen and Jared put together a number of those for the stakeholders. And then they could say, "I like this, I don't like this. Or I really like this one."
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And from there we identify key page templates to start marking up as well, too. So key page templates, meaning that we identify the auto [goal 00:19:56] full page as a [inaudible 00:19:59] that we can explore as well too, in addition to the homepage. What does that look like without content as well, too. The initial page starter. When you actually install Drupal, and also have the theme enabled, what does that look like? So we went through a lot of different iterations of how that page could be presented in addition to a version where we have a bunch of content created as well, too. So that was great.
Matt Kleve:
So after we get the artistic folks out of the way, it's time to start building stuff, right?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yes.
Mike Herchel:
Well, they're never fully out of the way.
Matt Kleve:
That's true, because it's a continual feedback loop, right? You might end up getting a site or a portion of the theme built, and then they say, "well, yeah, the way this works, maybe we need to shift it a little bit more." Like after you get something usable, that's when you can really iterate on your designs, right?
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree with that, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
So you've mentioned all of these people who are a part of the team. Is everybody a Lullabot?
Mike Herchel:
No, not everybody's a Lullabot.
Matt Kleve:
Did they close out the rest of the community and say, "no, you cannot come into my sandbox"?
Mike Herchel:
No, absolutely not.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Mike Herchel:
We need as many people as possible. Well, not as many people as possible, because it's hard to manage everybody.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
But right now, we have like a good group of people.
Matt Kleve:
And I think that probably started, Mike, with your excitement. You're like, "hey! We got to do this!" and of course you're going to bug the people that you see every day at work, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Hey! We gotta do this! We got to do this!
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
That's exactly how it happened. I got Putra into it. I got Jen Watowski, who got Jared into it. And the next person that I tricked into it was Matthew [Tift 00:21:44], who's a back-end of it. But Matthew was one of the leads of the configuration management initiative.
Matt Kleve:
I remember when that happened, and I remember thinking that's really smart, because Matthew saw through some of those really tricky bits when configuration was going into Corp, and he was a part of that team. And I think he has a really good grasp on getting stuff into Corp, and that process, and working with the team, and making things happen on that front. So I thought that was really good.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. So he volunteered to kind of help out with some documentation, and to run our weekly Slack meetings, and things like that. And he's been mostly laying low, because like right now, the state of the project; there's not a heck of a lot that he can do. But he's been running the meetings, but once we start submitting the core patches, which will come up, I'm sure I'm going to ask him to help out in various different ways so he has bandwidth.
Matt Kleve:
So technically, did you get to use any real cool front end widgetry that is new and great and improved for...[crosstalk 00:22:53]
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
I can talk a little bit about that. So these designs that came up have some features. So if you can visualize Bartik in your head; Bartik is kind of almost flat. It doesn't have any type of drop-down menus, it doesn't have any interactions, or anything like that. If you go into mobile mode, I know a screen... all of the navigation items just kind of wrap and stick there.
Mike Herchel:
So for this, we wanted it to feel modern, so it has a lot of cool features. So of course it's mobile friendly. It would need to be. But it also has second level navigation, which in the desktop version, those manifest as drop-down menus. And in mobile versions, it is like a little tap menu, a little plus and it expands. The desktop version of the theme also has like a sliding menu where like a sliding header where as you scroll down, the header fixes itself. But then it exposes a little button where you can kind of slide that menu out of the way in case you want the full experience. Which I think is kind of a really neat effect, and it's just kind of neat.
Mike Herchel:
In addition to that, we're trying to make the theme kind of useful for a lot of people, so we have some theme settings to change the background color of the site branding block. And we have an option to turn on the mobile navigation all of the time. So for example, if for whatever reason you want 20 first-level navigation items, you can do that because you can transition to that mobile menu.
Matt Kleve:
So going through your list, Mike, you talked about some of the new features that you're adding. You wanted to do some sliding menus, some drop-downs stuff. Of course it's going to work well on mobile. You talked about doing some color shifting to allow people to really kind of personalize their site and make it look a little different just right off the hop with some settings, and adding mobile navigation. Just the straightforward fold up your navigation so that a mobile user doesn't see 87 links.
Matt Kleve:
So right after this, let's talk a little bit about what it took to actually get the work done.
Mike Herchel:
Welcome back to the Lullabot Podcast. We are talking about the new and fancy Olivero theme for Drupal 9.1.
Matt Kleve:
Hey, yeah. And there's a good group of people, many of them Lullabots, working on that. How y'all put together a design and some of the things that you wanted to do with it, and now we're going to get a little bit into how it was built and where we stand today.
Matt Kleve:
First Mike, I mentioned the word triptych. Putra, I'm still on this, because I thought this was actually really clever. It was part of Bartik, there were three regions side by side, and they were called triptych. I think one, two, and three, or maybe a, b, and c. I don't remember.
Matt Kleve:
Do you know what the word triptych means?
Mike Herchel:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
This is your jeopardy moment of the day.
Mike Herchel:
A third.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Herchel:
It has the word trip in there.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
You're smart. It's actually a term from the art world. Where three different paintings or three different individual works of art all sat side by side. Often hinged, and they all kind of go together.
Mike Herchel:
So I have a question for you, Matt Kleve.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
How do you spell triptych?
Matt Kleve:
T-R-I-P-T-Y-C-H.
Mike Herchel:
Oh, well.
Matt Kleve:
Geez, we are a bunch of smart people, aren't we?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right.
Matt Kleve:
I pulled up the Wikipedia page just so that I could make myself sound smart.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Oh, I didn't know about that.
Matt Kleve:
It was one of those things I remember Jen Simmons was doing a podcast announcing the Bartik theme, and it was one of those things that stuck in my brain ever since. It was like, "huh, I'll remember that for Jeopardy someday."
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
I haven't been on Jeopardy yet, so I don't know. Anyway, so naming things is hard, and sometimes that's one thing that I think Putra mentioned, was naming the Olivero theme after Rachel Olivero? Is that the case? Can we talk a little bit about that?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, totally. So back up a little bit. Bartik is named after Jean Bartik, who is a famous woman computer programmer from I guess back in the [inaudible 00:27:30] days, or something like that. So as you said, it's difficult to name things, but we said it would be really awesome to name it after another woman programmer, or some type of under-represented group, or something like that.
Mike Herchel:
So our initial thought was Grace Hopper, who was another famous woman developer. And we were kind of leaning that way. We actually created the namespace on Drupal.org initially. But Hopper kind of sounds weird, because if you don't know, Hopper has different meanings too. Like there's actually a noun called hopper, and things like that. So that's a little weird. And it seems like there's a Grace Hopper Foundation, and stuff. She gets a good amount of publicity through that, and through other things.
Matt Kleve:
And Grace Hopper is the person that is responsible for a bug, right? A bug being a programming term. Isn't that right? I'm trying to remember the story, but no? Okay. [crosstalk 00:28:45] I could be making that one up, but I think I'm right.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, let's just go with that.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
I think that's the case, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah. It's because of the literal bug, and the famous picture. But, yeah. Anyway.
Mike Herchel:
We were having a discussion in the Lullabot Slack about naming, and this discussion as naming things kind of do, it quickly [inaudible 00:29:06] and got pretty large, and a bunch of people were hopping in.
Mike Herchel:
One of our coworkers, [inaudible 00:29:11] [Almadares 00:29:11] said "hey, why can't we name this after Rachel Olivero?" Who is a former member of the Drupal community who recently passed. Rachel worked at the National Institute for the Blind, and she was always an accessibility advocate. So the theme is named after her. It's called Olivero to honor her legacy.
Matt Kleve:
Cool. That's great. Of course, accessibility would be top of mind.
Mike Herchel:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
Being a part of Corp, for one, and holding her name, for two, as well.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, I don't think she would be very proud if we made the theme inaccessible.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Indeed.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
So we left off on the building side talking about some of the things that were important as far as building a theme out. What did that take technically? Were you able to use any new modern tools, or is that going to be a problem adding these modern tools to core, or how does that work?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, they did demo it out a little bit, and we created a proof of concept. Putra, do you want to talk a little bit about it?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, I can definitely jump into that as well, too. So, throughout the design process, we built a prototype and static HTML, CSS, and also JavaScript. The intention was to validate the new features and to help answer some potential UI/UX issue that [inaudible 00:30:38] during the design process as well too. Mike mentioned early on the [inaudible 00:30:44]. We introduced a lot of new features like secondary menu, and also menus kind of compact as well, too, in the sense that when you scroll down the page, it turns into a more condensed version of the header, and also the fly out animation that we have for the [inaudible 00:31:03] menu as well, too.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
So the point of the proof of concept is to investigate the use of the header on scroll into action. In addition to on mobile and also on tablet devices. It also gives the site an opportunity to validate a use of CSS grid as well, too, to make sure it works well on [legacy 00:31:22] browsers, and especially on I-11.
Mike Herchel:
Yep.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Which we have to do some progressive enhancement feature to make sure that things will say rendering correctly as well, too. But not just that, the proof of concept we were able to utilize to make sure that a market is also cemented. It also meets the accessibility requirements as well, too. So having stuff built, and a proof of concept before we actually jumped into the theme development helps answer a lot of the unknowns. And also we were able to pinpoint some of the gaps that were not known yet, that we didn't get to explore in the design process as well, too.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, absolutely. And it was a lot easier to iterate on that on static HTML than of course if you're in Drupal templates. Because we're just modifying HTML, which compared to... [crosstalk 00:32:21]
Matt Kleve:
You can build a website without Drupal? Shh, don't tell our clients.
Mike Herchel:
Okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
But you wouldn't have an awesome content management system to manage your content.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, so stripping it down to its most basic made a lot of sense.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stripping it down to its most basic, and then we took that proof of concept and ran it by a couple of the Drupal accessibility maintainers. And we were just looking for issues, that they said like, "hey, no way." Or, "hey, yeah, you can do this if you do this." And we did a lot of reworking of the primary navigation based on those issues.
Mike Herchel:
For example, the desktop version of the primary navigation if you have that secondary drop-down, we initially were going to just kind of activate that using the focus within, pseudo-CSS property, or the focus [inaudible 00:33:17] that for I-11, so you could just tab through it, but talking with some of the accessibility maintainers, well, that kind of works, but it's not that good. We ended up building a button and styling it kind of like a little down arrow, so you can tab over to that button and then hit enter, and then it opens up the menu.
Mike Herchel:
And there's a lot of little accessibility niceties like that. It's still not perfectly accessible, but it will be by the time we release it.
Matt Kleve:
That's great. So after a proof of concept, I understand there was a sprint where a lot of people got some work done, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, at the best Drupal camp ever.
Matt Kleve:
So you came to Colorado?
Mike Herchel:
No, Florida. Colorado's a [inaudible 00:34:07].
Putra Bonaccorsi:
We had a Drupal Camp.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, Florida Drupal Camp. Florida Drupal Camp sponsored Putra to come on down.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that was great. That was my first time in Orlando in a while, so it was good to just be at DrupalCon. Sorry, Drupal Camp, Florida, and be there just to spend on Olivero.
Matt Kleve:
It's a bit like DrupalCon, but better.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
I don't know if I would qualify that... [crosstalk 00:34:32]
Mike Herchel:
And the mouse is just down the road. Like you could go and see the mouse.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
But, yeah. It was fun to just work with Mike in person as well, too. We work for a [inaudible 00:34:43] company where we do a lot of work through video screen sharing on Zoom, but it's nice to just see folks in person and also be able to collaborate with other people who are interested in [contributing 00:34:56] their time to the Olivero Project as well, too.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, and we had some people in person to help out that were really, really helpful. Including people like Alex McCabe, and [Hawkeye 00:35:08] [Tinderwolf 00:35:09], and Brian Perry, and Matthew [Conerkin 00:35:11], and during the code [sprint 00:35:13], we just kind of assigned tasks, and then they just went over and pecked at their keyboards and ended up coming up with some stuff. And kind of by the end of it, we had I think what the header was actually in Drupal.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Mike Herchel:
And that was a big lift.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Definitely. We also had the initial starter page created as well, too. Just more of like a placeholder, just to see what the header would look like with some content.
Matt Kleve:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And we also had the footer block configured correctly as well, too. So we were able to get a good amount of theme and work done in doing that [inaudible 00:35:47] as well, too.
Matt Kleve:
Cool.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Kleve:
So at this point right now, and then it was the Olivero Project on Drupal.org, is that where things are happening?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, it's Drupal.org/project/Olivero.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Mike Herchel:
It's currently in [contrib 00:36:06], and we can talk about the future of what this looks like in a bit, but if you want to get in to help, that is where. And we can talk about our meetings and stuff toward the end.
Matt Kleve:
So where do things stand now? I mean, there's been a lot of work done since Drupal Camp Florida. Florida Drupal Camp.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, so it's actually looking really, really good. We have a tugboat preview that if you were to look at, you would probably say, "hey, this thing is pretty well done." But Putra and I know where all the skeletons lie, and there's a substantial number of skeletons in the closet. And it's our job to kind of... [crosstalk 00:36:41]
Matt Kleve:
As represented by issues in the queue?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, yeah. Most of them are represented. Some of them are just in my head so far, but they're going to get documented pretty soon.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And there are some design components that are still missing, as far as just refining the sidebar, which we're still in the process of trying to refine. But that's coming along pretty well, as well.
Matt Kleve:
When building a theme for Corp, you also have to consider every part of Corp needs to actually look right as well.
Mike Herchel:
Yes.
Matt Kleve:
So there are lots of...[crosstalk 00:37:17]
Mike Herchel:
So before our module... [crosstalk 00:37:18]
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Matt Kleve:
Is form still a part of Corp? Honestly I don't know.
Mike Herchel:
It is.
Matt Kleve:
I haven't used it in so long.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
It is, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
I was thinking pole, which I thought maybe had been yanked out, but I wasn't sure.
Mike Herchel:
Pole, yanked.
Matt Kleve:
Okay. But there are lots of other modules that exist. And now views, right?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
Views in Corp. You have to consider how a view would be displayed, and how your theme is going to display all these different views as well.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Definitely.
Matt Kleve:
There's a lot of work in there, just to hammer everything out and figure out all the [edge 00:37:46] [cases 00:37:46].
Mike Herchel:
Layout builder, media.
Matt Kleve:
Oh my gosh, yes.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Media, yeah. Yep.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's a good chunk, and we're going to support it all and make it look really, really awesome. A lot of it is looking pretty good. I was actually messing around earlier. I have a copy of Lullabot's website on my local, so I said well, I'm just going to run up Olivero on that and just kind of poke at things and see what it looks like.
Matt Kleve:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mike Herchel:
It didn't look terrible. There was some stuff that was on theme because they were custom.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah. I mean, if Lullabot builds their own website, it's like this has got to be custom, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, but I got into layout builder and started moving stuff around, and I was like, "you know, it's actually working pretty good for all intents and purposes." There's a couple things. I'm going to go in there and make a list. There's a couple things we could clean up.
Matt Kleve:
Sure.
Mike Herchel:
But it's all looking pretty good. But part of creating a theme for Corps is it has to support everything.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
People are going to throw random content at it, random this, blocks, and I've been working on the grid system and the overall layout system of it, and part of what we do... We're using CSS grid, right? And if you're familiar with CSS grid, you'll know that by default the grid [00:39:11] will only span like one column, which makes everything look super narrow and squished. And so we have to have some default rules in there that say the grid column, the [00:39:27], going to spread out and take up the full amount. And we have different widths, like we have a small, medium, and large kind of content widths. And sometimes they need to break out of the grid, which is impossible to do with CSS grid when you use some kind of negative margin trickery to do that.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
It honestly is pretty dirty. If you were to look at the code, I think that... [crosstalk 00:39:53]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
But we'll make it a lot cleaner. Obviously there's certain things we can clean up upon as far as the way we're actually setting our grid systems.
Matt Kleve:
And to be fair, it's currently alpha, right? So it's okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
It's enough. Exactly.
Mike Herchel:
Well, it's not alpha yet. It will be alpha.
Matt Kleve:
Oh.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
It will be soon. Yeah.
Mike Herchel:
I mean the way that this is done by design, like breaking out of the grid, is inherently a little dirty. Because you are using those negative margins, and there's no way to do this unless you have some grid support, which browsers do not have that.
Matt Kleve:
Darn those browsers!
Mike Herchel:
I know, right? And we have to support I-11.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
And we try to be diligent about having some sort of fallback styles for other components. If you're using a table, in views, we have out of the box styles for that accounted for, as well, too. Like you said Matt, there's a lot of different cases or features that we also need to account for out of the box. Especially in Drupal core, making sure that we have a proper [inaudible 00:40:58], and things are on the screen correctly.
Matt Kleve:
So you're trying to make sure that the one size fits all underwear... [crosstalk 00:41:05]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Matt Kleve:
... is comfortable for most people?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right. Can you imagine having to... [crosstalk 00:41:13]
Mike Herchel:
[crosstalk 00:41:13] It needs to be breathable.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Right. Can you imagine having to design for all that? I'm sure that Jared and Jen can also speak more about it.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah, that'll be interesting. We'll definitely get into that.
Mike Herchel:
Jared and Jen, by the way, have a talk at DrupalCon, and I don't know if... well, it was accepted to DrupalCon North America, and I'm assuming that it's also going to be at DrupalCon Global, but the [inaudible 00:41:30] talk is designing for chaos. That's exactly what they're designing for. [crosstalk 00:41:36]
Matt Kleve:
You said that word again.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah. They gave that talk at Florida Drupal Camp, which as I said is the best Drupal Camp ever, and it was recorded. So we'll link to that in the footer of our note here. If you want a sneak preview.
Matt Kleve:
So let's look at the future. You said we're not quite alpha yet. When is that happening? What's the plan? What do you need to do to do that?
Mike Herchel:
Friday, Friday, Friday.
Matt Kleve:
Okay. So it's coming out soon.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, it's coming out. We're recording this on Tuesday, we're going to release it on Friday.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yep.
Matt Kleve:
So really you just have to tag the release, right? I mean, that's... [crosstalk 00:42:09]
Mike Herchel:
[crosstalk 00:42:09] No. Well, I mean, honestly... [crosstalk 00:42:12]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
[crosstalk 00:42:12] It's more extensive than that, yeah.
Mike Herchel:
It's good enough to get out there, but I have a little list of mostly little minor things I want to do just to kind of get it out in front of people.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, but just to pick back on that, most of the majority of the must-have features are pretty much in alpha, obviously. We have a few things that we need to sort out, but at the same time, it's looking great. If you look at the tugboat preview that Mike mentioned earlier, the site... it's coming together really well. You can pretty much have a nice blog post site utilizing the Olivero alpha release.
Mike Herchel:
But you and I are taking Friday off, and we're going to kind of do a little mini sprint, and anyone that wants to join in; there's a #D-9 theme. Is there a dash in there? I have Slack open, I don't know. But if you go to our Olivero Project page, the link through there, and I think it's D9/theme on Drupal Slack, and we're going to be in there just kind of knocking down issues, figuring out what we want for the alpha, and then sometime in mid-afternoon we'll probably tag the release and maybe write a quick blog post or something like that.
Matt Kleve:
And then from where, where do you go? Let's imagine we're past Friday, and we have an alpha release with a few of these bugs knocked out. What happens next?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
We need to create the roadmap for the beta release, so we need to make sure that we have all the remaining work for the project itself in addition to making sure that we have all those tickets created as well, too. And vetted by the community. So that's basically the next step, is to make sure that we have all that must have features defined so that we can bring it up to the product manager. Someone like Angie Byron, and also [inaudible 00:44:05] to take a look at. And that should also take us to the next phase of having the release manager be involved in that process as well, too, making sure that our code is up to Drupal Corp standard as well.
Mike Herchel:
Yes. So we need to submit a core patch, probably like early next month, and... [crosstalk 00:44:27]
Matt Kleve:
[crosstalk 00:44:27] So really you'll take Drupal Head and roll a patch based off of adding your theme to the core? I mean, is that how that works?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, I mean I don't even know what. We're going to have to reach out for assistance on some of that type of stuff, because I'm not exactly sure what's involved. I know [inaudible 00:44:44] Larry said there's some type of automation or something like that that we can get.
Matt Kleve:
So at that point, like when do you expect to need to have to do that? When do we start talking about the inclusion into core, and... [crosstalk 00:44:56]?
Mike Herchel:
[crosstalk 00:44:56] So we're going to talk about that next month, which is June, so we're probably going to try to get that initial patch done sometime mid-June, so people can actually start getting their eyes on it. And at that point, there's going to be a lot of people saying, "well I don't like this," or "I don't like this," and we'll say, "too bad," or we'll say, "yeah, that's totally valid."
Mike Herchel:
Sorry, I'm having like a little brain fart here.
Matt Kleve:
Surely you'd be a little sensitive over that, right? Surely. I mean, that might be a little tricky for you to take a little criticism over your baby.
Mike Herchel:
Oh. So my code is traditionally so bad, I'm used to that.
Matt Kleve:
Okay. That doesn't give me confidence that this is going to make it to core, man. Try again.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
I have confidence.
Matt Kleve:
Oh, okay. Okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
We have real people helping us.
Mike Herchel:
Putra. We have Putra, and we have a lot of really, really good people.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah. We have a lot of great people just contributing to the project, and they've been, I would say, kicking ass.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
In terms of helping us get to the alpha release. So I just want to say thank you for everyone who has contributed their time to this Olivero Project.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, absolutely. So there's going to be multiple core patches. Probably over the course of a couple months. And I think the deadline to actually get it committed to core is, if I recall correctly, like early August, or something like that.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
And that's to make 9.1, right?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
That's your timeline?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Mike Herchel:
That's to make 9.1, which is I think going to be released in November.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah. And prior to that, obviously we had to go through multiple reviews with the accessibility group as well, because we were making sure that everything is pretty much good to go as far as our coding standards and making sure that the color contrast and everything is accessible.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
That's something that you've involved all these people, right? You've talked about how a lot of those folks have been involved.
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
And you've talked about how many of the stakeholders at least know you exist if they haven't already taken a look, and taken you for a test drive at this point.
Mike Herchel:
Absolutely.
Matt Kleve:
So hopefully that helps smooth out that process, and... [crosstalk 00:47:07]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
[crosstalk 00:47:07] Indeed.
Matt Kleve:
[crosstalk 00:47:07]... get things going.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
But we definitely need the stamp of approval.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
In order to get stuff patched, as well, too.
Matt Kleve:
Right. Well, it sounds like you're on the right track, but there's work in front of you. And you said it was the Olivero Project, Drupal.org/ProjectOlivero, and you can jump in and take a look.
Mike Herchel:
Totally.
Matt Kleve:
And yell at Mike about his CSS that's terrible or something.
Mike Herchel:
My CSS is not terrible, it's just [inaudible 00:47:35].
Matt Kleve:
Putra, I have a question for you.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Sure.
Matt Kleve:
Do you regret saying yes to Mike?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
That's a great question. Given the amount of work that has gone into the project, no. To be honest with you, I'm just so thankful that Mike sees me as this person of like, "hey, you can come in and help out with this effort."
Matt Kleve:
Sure.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
To be honest with you. So I'm really grateful for him to give me this opportunity to be involved and lead the project as well, too. So no, I don't feel regret at all. It's been fun, being involved in a Drupal Corp initiative.
Matt Kleve:
Professionally, your role has shifted a little bit at Lullabot.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
You were a front end developer, you're now project manager.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly.
Matt Kleve:
Is that something that this is kind of fun, that you actually might get to still write a little CSS every now and again?
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Oh yeah, for sure. And the thing is obviously my new title... that just came in recently.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
But at the same time, I'm still doing some light coding as well, too.
Matt Kleve:
Okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
But obviously this also gives me an opportunity to just dive back into code, and also just not having to worry about reaching out to clients.
Matt Kleve:
You get to get back in the weeds. [crosstalk 00:48:49]
Putra Bonaccorsi:
[crosstalk 00:48:49] Exactly. Get back in the weeds, but at the same time there's some coordination that needs to be done as well, too on the Olivero site as far as [inaudible 00:48:58] patches, and reaching out to folks and making sure they have a chance to review our code base as well, too.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
[inaudible 00:49:06] project management involvement as well, too, but that type of work has been divided between Mike and I. Also Matthew [Tiff 00:49:15] as well, too.
Matt Kleve:
Cool.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
So it's been helpful having other folks involved in the project.
Matt Kleve:
Mike, is there anything else we should add before we wrap this up?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, so we meet Mondays at 10 o'clock eastern time, and D9-theme challenge Slack. I think that's sixteen hundred GMT or something? I have no clue.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly and it's 10 o'clock eastern time.
Matt Kleve:
Ten eastern. Ten in the morning, eastern time.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yep.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Ten, nine, eight. Mountain. Ah, my god, 7 o'clock pacific time? Dude.
Mike Herchel:
We also have a number of Europeans, and we happen to have a person from central Russia who is just like a machine.
Matt Kleve:
Yeah?
Mike Herchel:
Just cranking out patches.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, he's been killing it. The patches.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
That's cool. So you said Slack meetings on Mondays?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, Slack meetings on Mondays, and that's kind of really about it. I encourage everyone to download the theme. It works in Drupal 9, it works in Drupal 8. It should look really good if you install it and maybe try to poke some holes in it. That's kind of one of the goals of this alpha. To actually have that [00:50:34] up there so people can download it and pull it in, and start just screwing with it.
Matt Kleve:
You showed a video to me once a while back Mike, about... I don't remember if it was your proof of concept, or if it's more recent than that. Clicking around the website and kind of showing things off.
Mike Herchel:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Kleve:
Is that something that we could put on the podcast page?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Just link to it?
Mike Herchel:
Yeah, we could also link to the tugboat preview.
Matt Kleve:
Oh, okay.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, I was going to say that as well, too.
Matt Kleve:
That's cool. [crosstalk 00:51:00].
Mike Herchel:
Which the tugboat preview will only be active for probably, I don't know. A couple more months, or something like that.
Matt Kleve:
Okay, it'll be there as long as it's there.
Mike Herchel:
Yeah.
Matt Kleve:
Like tugboat. Like ephemeral tugboat previews.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
I also should mention again that we're having sprint this Friday, so if folks are available to help out or just trying out the theme for themself... [crosstalk 00:51:30]
Mike Herchel:
That'd be Friday, May 15th.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Exactly. And if they see any issues, [inaudible 00:51:35] great. Issues in issue queue, let us know.
Matt Kleve:
Super. Cool. Thanks for joining us, Putra.
Putra Bonaccorsi:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Matt Kleve:
Thanks for talking about your project, Mike, that I've been bugging you to do a podcast about for months now.
Mike Herchel:
I was going to go on Mike Anello's podcast, but then he turned me down.
Matt Kleve:
I heard the talking Drupal guys wanted you too, dang it. I'm glad you came here first.

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